I want my website to rank on the first page for a very competitive keyword

[donsilvernail]

I am a WordPress designer and can service national clients. I want to rank on the first page for the keyword WordPress designer. This is a highly competitive keyword MOZ gives it a 68% difficulty. I rank locally in nj for WordPress designer nj and a multitude of local WordPress based key words. I rank on page 10 of serps doing a private browsing session. Some of my national competitors rank on the first page with not many links in.

How could i be so low on the serps for the base keyword WordPress Designer but for local WordPress designer nj be number 1 everytime?

What should be my best plan of attack if i want to Rank much higher for this one specific keyword hopefully page 1.

I think this one keyword could increase business greatly so it is a top priority for me.

I appreciate all advice

[EGOL]

How could i be so low on the serps for the base keyword WordPress Designer but for local WordPress designer nj be number 1 everytime?

New Jersey is small time.  There are 9 million people in NJ compared to 320 million in the rest of the country.    If you ask somebody in another state to name three big cities in NJ they will be struggling to name more than one.  There are more designers in a few blocks of NYC than there are in all of NJ.

What should be my best plan of attack if i want to Rank much higher for this one specific keyword hopefully page 1.

Build yourself the most awesome WP site that anybody's ever seen.  Make it  great, fantastic, then give away the template for free.  Make twenty other awesome WP sites and give away those templates for free.  Write the best blog around on how to do kickass things with WP, allow people to subscribe for free.  Make some really useful WP plugins and give them away for free.   Show your stuff. Be generous and helpful.  Then draw the line at what you do for free and what you charge for.  Start getting your name out in front of people by contributing to a few of the most visible and credible designer websites.

Why do all of that?  If you want to be The Man for WP Designer you gotta walk the talk.

Competition is tough.  Some businesses have one person working to make rain for every person who provides service.  Some retailers have one person working to promote the website for every person doing fulfillment.  That's how competitive it is.

[MattRoney]

Hi Donald!

EGOL is spot-on. I just also want to share a couple resources you have access to from Moz that could help. Apologies if you've seen these elsewhere in Q&A; I recommend them all the time.

The first is Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts" blog post. It'll give you a really good sense of how to approach your keyword targeting from a topical perspective, rather that scrambling to rank for specific keywords.

The second is the Full SERP Analysis report, which is part of the Keyword Difficulty Tool. You can run it on the keyword you're trying to rank for and see what factors are most likely leading the first-page sites to rank. There's a video on it here.

I hope that helps!

[donsilvernail]

I am only looking to rank for this specific keyword as it has potential to bring national clients. to a hometown Jersey boy!

I have done the Full SERP report and have been analyzing the data.

Thank you!

[MattRoney]

Sure thing! I hope it helps.